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Book_>..• "_ 

Copyiiglit N n _ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





























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THE LARGER VISION 


A STUDY OF THE 

EVOLUTION THEORY IN ITS RELATION 
TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 


BY 

C. A. WENDELL 

n 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA 



Be not children in mind: yet in malice 
be ye babes, but in mind be men. 

1 Cor. 14. 20. 


Jr 

Copyright, 1923, by 
C. A. Wendell 





to 

I 



CONTENTS 


Prologue . 

The Dread of the Evolution Theory 
What is the Evolution Theory ?.... 

Objections Considered . 

The Six Day Problem. 

The Charge of Atheism. 

As to the Image of God. 

What of Immortality? . 

Sin and Salvation . 

Is Evolution only a Guess?.... 

The Danger to Faith. 

The Larger Vision . 

Epilogue . 

Books for Further Study. 


5 

7 

18 

33 

33 

36 

38 

48 

49 
53 
62 
76 
84 
86 


















Prologue 

We were sitting on the banks of the Cardigan 
river. The smooth-flowing water was golden 
with the glow of the setting sun. Both of us 
are lovers of nature, and our conversation had 
led us far afield in time and space, ending in 
a friendly dispute about the evolution theory. 
While we were talking, a holy hush fell upon 
the world around us and we lapsed into silence. 

After a long while she resumed the conversa¬ 
tion with an abrupt, “Are you absolutely sure 
that the evolution theory is true ?” 

“Why, no, of course not!” I replied. “I never 
said that it is, and I don't suppose I ever will. 
Neither have I said that it is not, and I doubt 
that I ever will. I am no biologist. I have no 
more right to an opinion on that than Professor 
Protoplasm has on the meaning of Urim and 
Thummim.” 

“Then why do you talk about it? You admit 
that it has caused a terrible upheaval and has 
deeply disturbed the faith of many thousands 


6 


THE LARGER VISION 


of Christian people. Why do you not join 
hands with those who try to uproot it?” 

Thus the Heart and the Brain conversed. 
The following pages contain the conversation 
— plus many things that were not said at that 
time. 


The Dread of the Evolution Theory 

i 

There had been a public hearing on one of 
the so-called anti-evolution bills that took so 
much of the time and attention of the Kentucky 
legislature not long ago. On the evening ac¬ 
commodation train for Lexington was an 
elderly man who had attended the hearing and 
bravely borne testimony for God and the Bible. 
The bill was being warmly debated among the 
passengers, and the old man took part. With 
tears in his eyes and a tremulous quaver in his 
voice he said, “I want my boy, when he prays, 
to say, 'Our Father who art in heaven/ and not 
'Our monkey who art in a cocoanut tree/ ” 

Let no man grin at the old man’s grief. Call 
him ignorant if you like, but grant that his 
words reveal a great, loving father-heart with 
deep concern for the welfare of his boy. Honor 
him for that, whatever you may think of his 
intellectual opinions. 

And he is not alone. There are thousands of 
people to whom the Bible is "the only rule of 
faith and conduct,” and who would rather die 


8 


THE LARGER VISION 


than give it up. They send their children to 
school with reverence for holy things and get 
them back, in all too many instances, with rev¬ 
erence for nothing. Do not blame them if they 
complain. They love the old familiar Bible 
stories, hoary with age and sacred with saintly 
associations. How can they enjoy to see them 
ridiculed? They turn for example to the story 
of creation — how God made heaven and earth 
and all things living, crowning the miracle by 
making man in His own image — and it gives 
them faith and hope and courage to grapple 
with the tragedies of life. Do not expect them 
to smile gladly at you if you announce to them 
that “educated people do not believe that sort 
of thing any more.” You may hold that the old 
Bible stories are nothing but fiction and will 
never again be believed, but remember that 
your boasting about it is likely to cause your 
old friends deeper pain than if you plunged a 
dagger into them. Only those of us who have 
been reared in an atmosphere of reverence and 
have experienced the convicing power of the 
Word in our own lives can understand the 
pathos of it all, and only a brute can take pleas¬ 
ure in it. 


THE DREAD OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 9 


II 

But there are other people who are entitled 
to sympathetic consideration. The author of 
these pages has spent over twenty years among 
students in High School, College, or University, 
as teacher or pastor, and happens to know 
something of their problems too. Many of 
them come from these good Christian homes, 
where piety is deep and sound, but where the 
intellectual horizon is perhaps rather limited. 
At school they are brought face to face with 
the universe in a manner they never had 
dreamed of before. They discover that nature 
operates according to fixed laws; that so far 
as we know, these laws never vary; and that 
back of every effect there is a corresponding 
natural cause. They perform experiments and 
obtain exactly the results predicted, which 
gives them confidence in the laws and facts of 
nature. They feel that they are treading on 
firm ground, and the farther they go the wider 
grows the horizon. They look into space and 
feel the earth shrinking beneath them till it is 
nothing but “a speck of cosmic dust floating 
among the stars.” They think of time, and see 


10 


THE LARGER VISION 


a thousand facts that seem to make it impos¬ 
sible to believe that this universe was made in 
a moment, four thousand years before Christ, 
and put into its present condition in a week. 
They study the processes of nature, and find 
innumerable facts which refuse to fit into the 
supposition that all organic forms in the world 
to-day were created in the beginning such as 
they are now. Plants and animals (man in¬ 
cluded), they are told, have evolved from the 
most primitive beginnings in the primeval seas. 
And this astonishing evolution, learned men 
assure them, has been going on for millions and 
millions of years. 

It is all so strange, and so different from 
what they have been brought up to believe. It 
confuses and bewilders them. The old faith 
glides out of their grasp. They try to hold on 
to it but cannot. Facts are terribly stubborn, 
and theories — well, of course there is a differ¬ 
ence between theories and facts, but theories 
are built on facts, and they are indispensable 
to human thought. We all use them. And the 
theory which explains the largest number of 
facts is the one we adopt. We cannot do other¬ 
wise. “When some one constructs a theory 


THE DREAD OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 11 

which accounts for the facts of organic life 
better than does the evolution theory,” said a 
noted scientist to the author some time ago, 
“then we shall adopt it at once, but until then 
we must of necessity cling to what we have.” 

Ill 

But what of the Bible? What of the old- 
fashioned faith, the faith of our fathers, the 
faith of our childhood? Give it up? The sug¬ 
gestion plucks at the heart strings with horri¬ 
ble rudeness. Return? Ask the oak to shrink 
back into the acorn! No, return is impossible, 
for “there’s no end of voyaging when once the 
voice is heard.” Then what is a poor soul to 
do? “Take your choice,” says the so-called 
Fundamentalist, “the Bible or the evolution 
theory, our Father in heaven or a monkey in 
the jungle, the image of God or the image of 
the beast, the gospel of salvation or the gospel 
of dirt, the faith of our fathers or the guesses 
of the infidel. Take your choice.” 

Enlarging still further upon the subject he 
brings in a bristling indictment against the 
evolution theory, which may be expressed in 
some such form as this: 


12 


THE LARGER VISION 


“It contradicts the Bible at every turn. In¬ 
stead of the six days of creation spoken of 
there, it assumes the lapse of millions of years. 
It dethrones God and substitutes a blind ma¬ 
chine which is supposed automatically to evolve 
living organisms. It denies that man was made 
in the image of God and claims that he is a 
descendant of the monkeys. It implies a denial 
of the doctrine of immortality, for if man is 
nothing but an evolved animal he certainly can¬ 
not have an immortal soul. It is fundamentally 
unchristian, for it denies that man ever fell 
into sin, claims that there is an upward trend 
in nature, and dreams of a great current of 
destiny on whose bosom all things are being 
carried to perfection. In such a dream there 
is no room for Christ, and no need of Him. 
It is a heathen heresy pure and simple, an un¬ 
proven theory, a mere guess. It has upset the 
faith of thousands, and should be stoutly denied 
by all true Christians, lest it upset the faith of 
numberless others.” 

Occasionally this indictment assumes a vigor 
which reminds one of the days of the Inquisi¬ 
tion. The following emanates from Zion City, 
Illinois: 


THE DREAD OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 13 

“Shame, ten thousand times shame, on min¬ 
isters who have adopted the demon-inspired 
Darwinian doctrine of evolution, that men came 
from monkeys! ... If any man wants to be¬ 
lieve that his ancestor was a monkey, that is 
his privilege, but he is a fool. I lift up my 
voice to-day in severest condemnation and de¬ 
nunciation of the doctrine of evolution.” 
(Leaves of Healing, Oct. 2, 1920.) 

And a famous “evangelist” is reported as 
having said that “All adherents of the evolu¬ 
tion theory should be lined up against a stone 
wall, confronted by a troop of soldiers, and 
shot through the heart.” That is how he would 
test the validity of a scientific theory! 

IV 

But other men, also interested in the attain¬ 
ment of God’s eternal truth, have somewhat 
different opinions. Tayler Lewis, in Lange’s 
Bible Commentary, that monumental work, so 
highly esteemed by conservative theologians 
and ministers of the gospel, has an interesting 
paragraph on the evolution of man from which 
the following may be quoted: 


14 


THE LARGER VISION 


“The full formation of man in the sixth day 
does not oppose the idea that the powers of- 
evolution of matter that were finally sublimated 
into the imperishable germs of the human body, 
and the types from lower forms that finally 
went into the human physical constitution, 
were being prepared during all the days. This 
was his being formed out of the earth, that is, 
out of nature in its evolving series. Here, too, 

. . . we have some light upon that dark and 
puzzling language, ‘when I was made in secret 
and curiously wrought in the lower parts of the 
earth/ ” Ps. 139. 15. (Commentary on Gen¬ 
esis, p. 135.)* 

The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Re¬ 
ligious Knowledge says, “Evolution is atheistic 
only when as a philosophy it reduces the world- 
ground to a system of mechanical necessity. 
When, however, the ultimate reality is con¬ 
ceived as a power realizing rational ends in the 
universe, evolution is affirmed as the uniform 
method by which this power fulfills its pur¬ 
poses/’ (Article, “Evolution.”) 

* Should any injustice be done any author quoted by 
tearing the quotation from its context, the reader can 
easily check up on it by turning to the work itself. To 
facilitate this, volume and page are carefully indicated. 



THE DREAD OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 15 

Away back in 1874 Alexander Winchell, then 
chancellor of Syracuse University, said,'‘Should 
these evolutionary doctrines become proven, 
even in their extreme phases, there will be no 
proof of the absence of immediate divine agency 
from any of the operations of life; and, having 
seen organization emerge from inert matter, 
we can believe more easily than before that 
‘God made man of the dust of the earth/ In 
any issue of scientific investigation in a new 
development of truth, Christian theism has 
nothing to fear, but only the truth to gain.” 
(The Doctrine of Evolution, p. 123.) 

Andrew C. Zenos, Professor of Biblical The¬ 
ology, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chi¬ 
cago, Ill., says, “The evolutionary and the 
Christian views of the world cannot logically 
be placed against each other as mutually ex¬ 
clusive and contradictory. . . . Christianity, so 
far as it enters into the intellectual life, . . . 
may confidently leave the facts of the lower 
world of processes and transformations to be 
schematized under the scientific generalization 
of evolution.” (International Standard Ency¬ 
clopaedia, edited by James Orr. Article, “Evo¬ 
lution.”) 


16 


THE LARGER VISION 


Andrew G. Voigt, President Southern Theo¬ 
logical Seminary (Lutheran), Columbia, S. C., 
and Professor of Systematic Theology: “It is 
not inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of 
creation to recognize an evolution within the 
created world, by which the divine idea is grad¬ 
ually realized and higher forms of creation 

arise out of lower forms under the direction of 

/ 

God.” (Biblical Dogmatics, p. 28.) 

John A. W. Haas, President Muhlenberg Col¬ 
lege (Lutheran), Allentown, Pa., and Professor 
of Religion and Philosophy: “Christianity can 
allow an evolution as the continuation of crea¬ 
tion. . . . The development still going on is the 
unfoldment and continuation of creation.” 
(Trends of Thought and Christian Faith, p. 
122 .) 

The late Bishop A. F. Beckman of Sweden, 
said to have been one of the saintliest of the 
theological conservatives of that country a few 
decades ago: “The evolution theory, cleansed 
of all adventurous and ill-founded speculation, 
has aided Christian thought in obtaining an 
insight into the law of unity which runs 
through the creative act itself, as well as the 
subsequent unfoldment.” (Teologisk Tidskrift, 
Vol. 27, p. 256.) 


THE DREAD OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 17 

William Anthony Granville, President of Get¬ 
tysburg College (Lutheran), Gettysburg, Pa.: 
“To cast overboard the concept of evolution is 
to deny the existence of numberless examples 
of evolutionary processes which are developing 
to-day before our very eyes or are unfolded to 
our minds.” (The Fourth Dimension and the 
Bible, p. 98.) 

William W. Keen, noted surgeon and scien¬ 
tist: “I am a firm believer in Christianity. I 
follow, very falteringly, it is true, in the foot¬ 
steps of my beloved Master, and adore Him as 
my divine Saviour. In Him are all my hopes 
for the future. As a Christian man, I find no 
difficulty in believing absolutely in Evolution, 
and also absolutely in Revelation.” (I Believe 
in God and in Evolution, p. 24.) 


The Larger Vision. 2. 


What is the Evolution Theory? 

I 

Here then are two groups of leaders with 
diametrically opposite views. Some say that 
you must choose between the Bible and the 
evolution theory — one or the other; while 
others claim that you may adhere to both. Why 
this difference of opinion? 

Because men differ in their interpretation 
both of the Bible and of the evolution theory. 
No interpretation of the Bible can fit Haeckel's 
atheistic interpretation of the evolution theory, 
and no interpretation of the evolution theory 
can fit the wooden literalism of Voliva’s inter¬ 
pretation of the Bible. Both are extremists, in 
opposite directions, and each has something of 
a following. Between these two camps there 
can be no peace. On the other hand, there are 
men who refuse to go to extremes one way or 
the other, and of course they differ with the 
extremists in both directions. Hence the differ¬ 
ence we have noticed. 


WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 19 

Disregarding the extremists, let us pause 
among these men of the golden medium. Let 
us ask two questions: What is the evolution- 
theory? and What is the purpose of the Bible? 

II 

First, the evolution theory. What is it? To 
begin with, it is not a “monkey theory.” The 
scientists do not claim that man is a descendant 
of the monkeys. What they do claim is that 
careful study of organic life has revealed that 
there is a very intimate kinship between man 
and the animals, and that the human race evi¬ 
dently did not come forth in a moment, ready 
made, but somewhat after the manner of the 
individual: by an orderly development from a 
primitive, animal-like state. 

In the next place, it should be carefully noted 
that Darwinism and the evolution theory are 
two different things. The theory of evolution 
antedated Darwin by many centuries, and is 
not at all dependent upon his speculations about 
it. He did not originate the theory, he only 
studied it and tried to explain it, though in 
doing this he did establish it upon a thoroughly 
scientific basis. In this he was the great 


20 


THE LARGER VISION 


pioneer. Vast research and profound study 
led him to believe that “natural selection” and 
“sexual selection” were the principal factors in 
the evolutionary process, and that the “survival 
of the fittest” prevailed in the world-wide strug¬ 
gle for existence. That there is a great deal 
of truth in this, no one can doubt who is fairly 
familiar with nature, but whether it is suffi¬ 
cient to account for the origin of species, as 
Darwin supposed, that is another question. 
Later research has thrown serious doubt on 
that, and in 1921 William Bateson, the great 
English scientist, said, “When students of other 
sciences ask us what is now currently believed 
about the origin of species we have no clear 
answer to give. . . . We cannot see how the 
differentiation into species came about.” 

But that does not mean that the evolution 
theory is dead. It is Darwin's attempted ex¬ 
planation of the origin of species, not the evo¬ 
lution theory as such, which has fallen under 
discredit among men of science. In the same 
address from which we already have quoted, 
Mr. Bateson said: 

“I have put before you very frankly the con- 


WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 21 

siderations which have made us agnostic as to 
the actual mode and process of evolution. When 
such confessions are made the enemies of sci¬ 
ence see their chance. . . . Let us then pro¬ 
claim in precise and unmistakable language 
that our faith in evolution is unshaken. Every 
available line of argument converges on this 
inevitable conclusion. . . . Our doubts are not 
as to the reality or truth of evolution, but as 
to the origin of species. . . . The discoveries 
of the last twenty-five years enable us for the 
first time to discuss these questions intelligent¬ 
ly and on a basis of fact.” (Science, Jan. 20, 
1922.) 

A year later the Council of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
consisting of representative men from all the 
leading branches of science, declared that 

“No scientific generalization is more strongly 
supported by thoroughly tested evidence than 
is that of organic evolution.” (Science, Jan. 
26, 1923.) 

Furthermore, it is not true, as is often 
claimed, that it is only the English and Ameri¬ 
can scientists who cling to the evolution theory. 


22 


THE LARGER VISION 


De Vries in Holland, Handlirsch in Austria, 
Berlese in Italy, Delage in France, Watase in 
Japan, Weisman, Driesch, Braun, the two 
Hertwigs in Germany, are only a few of the 
more outstanding figures in present day biology 
who hold to the theory of evolution. In fact, 
men who are in a position to know the scien¬ 
tific thought of the world declare that it is im¬ 
possible to find a leading scientist in any coun¬ 
try to-day who rej ects the theory. 

The large number of evolutionists in Eng¬ 
land, America, and Germany is due to the fact 
that for some reason biology is a favorite 
science in these countries. 

If therefore it be reasonable to suppose that 
the scientists know what they themselves be¬ 
lieve, it must evidently be put down as a fact 
that the evolution theory is not dead. The 
rumor of its death has been strangely per¬ 
sistent, but does not appear to be supported by 
facts. The author has followed the trail of it 
for many years, and in every case that he has 
had the opportunity of investigating he has 
found one of two things to be true: either the 
theory has been misunderstood and confused 
with something else, like Mendelism or some 


WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 23 

discarded transmutation theory, or the words 
of reputable scientists have been misconstrued. 
Mr. Bateson is a notable example of the latter. 
His doubts about Darwin's theory of the origin 
of species have been taken to mean surrender 
of the evolution theory, and that in spite of the 
fact that he said explicitly that they were not 
to be so understood. The plain fact of the 
matter is that for good or ill, with very few, 
if indeed any, exceptions the evolution theory 
is held by the leading scientists everywhere at 
the present time. 


Ill 

A technical definition of the theory must of 
course come from the scientists, not from a 
layman in science, but in plain English it is 
simply an attempt to explain the process by 
which the living things in the world came to be 
what they are. And the explanation it offers 
is that instead of having been “created such as 
we see them" they are the result of a gradual 
development, somewhat after the manner in 
which the oak develops out of an acorn. 

Let us try to visualize the problem. Imagine 
a deep, wooded valley which in some way has 


24 


THE LARGER VISION 


been submerged under water, so that only the 
tree tops are visible above the surface. Let us 
further imagine that we have been raised in 
the heart of some great city and have never 
seen a tree, and that we make a trip to the 
newly made lake, procure a boat, and glide out 
to investigate. All that we can see is the tips 
of the twigs, but we do what we can with these. 



We observe them minutely, compare them care¬ 
fully, and classify them as accurately as we can. 
What there is under the surface we do not 
know. Studying only what we see above the 
surface, we assume that the innumerable dis¬ 
connected twigs are “separate creations.” That 
is pure assumption, based on superficial knowl¬ 
edge, but for lack of deeper insight we accept 
it as truth. After a while somebody peers into 
the deep and discovers that two of the twigs 
belong together — they have both grown out 
of one and the same stem! The discovery 














WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 25 



causes quite a sensation. Is this a freak of 
nature, or may there be other twigs connected 
in a similar manner? Investigation proves 
that the latter is the case — in fact, all the 
twigs are so connected. Then it occurs to 
somebody that perhaps the branches them¬ 
selves are connected. It is a bold thought, and 
like the “separate creation” theory it is noth- 























26 


THE LARGER VISION 


ing but a theory, but the purpose of a theory 
is to guide us in our investigations, and this 
one serves that purpose admirably. It haunts 
the imagination and calls for investigation. 
An adventurous member of the party deter¬ 
mines to find out. He plunges into the water 
and dives down into the deep. After a while 
he returns and reports that the theory is cor¬ 
rect: as the twigs belong together, so do the 
branches. The smaller ones grow out of the 
larger ones farther down, and all indications 
are that still farther down they all grow out of 
one great central trunk. Further observation 
seems to show that all this did not come into 
















WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 27 

existence in a moment, but is the result of a 
slow, gradual, and orderly growth or evolution. 

IV 

In like manner men have assumed that all 
organic forms are disconnected, the different 
species being “separate creations.” But ad¬ 
venturous investigators have plunged into the 
deep, and upon returning have assured us that 
there is a mass of evidence that the organic 
world is far more closely knit together than 
people ever dream while gliding over the sur¬ 
face of things. Instead of being a conglomerate 
of “separate creations” it is a sort of world- 
tree whose trunk branches off into families, 
genera, species, varieties, and individuals — 
all of them connected in the most intimate kin¬ 
ship. The different species indeed do not cross 
and evolve out of one another — horses evolv¬ 
ing into cows, robins into wrens, monkeys into 
men and so on — any more than do the differ¬ 
ent branches of a tree, but if you follow them 
back through the geological ages, as the diver 
in our imaginary lake followed the separate 
branches of the submerged tree, you will find 
that like the branches of that tree the different 


28 


THE LARGER VISION 


individuals, varieties, etc., have risen out of a 
common ancestry. Furthermore, like that tree 
in the valley, this one also has not come forth 
with a sudden jerk, in obedience to a sudden 
command, but has evolved, in an orderly man¬ 
ner, through long, long ages of time. 

How different species originated, nobody 
knows. Darwin tried to explain it, but his 
explanation has not proven satisfactory. That 
they have evolved, however, from primitive 
beginnings, the scientists do not doubt. How 
life arose in the world is also unknown to 
natural science. Darwin followed its opera¬ 
tions as far back as reliable facts could guide 
him, then let his imagination lead him the rest 
of the way, till at last he stood, awe-inspired, 
in the presence of the primordial protoplasm 
into which the Creator breathed His life power, 
and out of which He has evolved the organic 
world we know to-day. “There is grandeur in 
this view of life, ,, such are Darwin's own 
words, “with its several powers, having origi¬ 
nally been breathed by the Creator into a few 
forms or into one." (Origin of Species, last 
paragraph.) 


WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 29 

Such, in brief, is the evolution theory, now 
so universally accepted. Criticism of it is of 
course in order, and real seekers after the 
truth, not least in the realm of science, will 
welcome it. But it must be offered in a manly, 
fair minded spirit and with thorough knowl¬ 
edge of the subject. Ridicule, denunciation, 
sophistry, pious warnings, dogmatic denials, 
may win the applause of the masses, but will 
not prevail in the long run. Bigotry will soon 
be detected. An evident determination to con¬ 
tradict everything the “enemy” says, will not 
challenge respect. The only proper spirit is 
that of perfect candor and unswerving devo¬ 
tion to the truth, whithersoever that may lead 
us. And the only effective method is that of 
thorough investigation. The critic who would 
really achieve his end must be able to prove 
that he knows all the facts known to the scien¬ 
tist, and that he has a theory which will better 
account for those facts than does the one he 
would overturn. For a man like the present 
writer, who has never had an opportunity for 
direct research in the field in which the evolu¬ 
tion theory is reared, to get up and declare that 
theory to be true — or false — would be absurd 


30 


THE LARGER VISION 


as well as presumptuous. He is no more quali¬ 
fied to pronounce upon the validity of that 
theory than is the average biologist to decide 
whether or not the book of Tobit ought to be 
in the Bible. What such a man does have a 
right to do, as a minister of the gospel and a 
student and teacher of the Bible, is to inquire 
into the relation between that Book and the 
findings of the scientists. 

V 

Now let us turn to the second question: 
What is the purpose of the Bible ? Where shall 
we seek an answer to that question — a posi¬ 
tive, indisputable answer? Precisely where we 
look for an answer to such a question pertain¬ 
ing to any other book — in the book itself. The 
title page, or the preface, or some other part 
of the book is pretty likely to indicate the pur¬ 
pose. It is so with the Bible. It answers our 
question itself. There are beautiful descrip¬ 
tions of nature, and charming historical narra¬ 
tives, but nowhere are we told that the purpose 
of the Bible is to make us wise in history or 
astronomy or geology or botany or zoology. 
The greatest commentator in Christendom, 


WHAT IS THE EVOLUTION THEORY? 31 

himself a contributor to the Bible, informs us 
that the purpose of it is to make us “wise unto 
salvation” (2 Tim. 3. 15), and Christ said the 
same thing, from a somewhat different angle, 
when He said that it bears witness of Him 
(John 5. 29). The germs of the evolution 
theory were in the world at His time, but He 
did not lift up His voice in “condemnation and 
denunciation.” He never bound His followers 
to this or that opinion about nature; neither 
did His apostles. Peter’s Pentecostal sermon 
was not a quarrel with the nature students, 
though there were plenty of them even then. 
He preached Christ and Him crucified, and 
every subsequent century has felt the thrill of 
that sermon. 

In connection with the purpose of the Bible 
some attention should be given to its language. 
It speaks the eternal truth of God, but in the 
poetic, imaginative style of the Orient. It re¬ 
veals the mind of God, but through the soul of 
the East. If we come to it with our cold, criti¬ 
cal, analytical Western mind and insist on read¬ 
ing it as we read a field book in botany or a 
handbook in anatomy, we are bound to have 
trouble. The Bible is a sanctuary, not a labora- 


32 


THE LARGER VISION 


tory; a Jacob’s ladder, not a railroad. It is a 
means of grace; let us not make it a means of 
hampering scientific investigation. It is an 
Oriental harp; let us not sift gravel with it. 

Sift gravel with a harp! The thought is re¬ 
pulsive. And yet there is such a demand for 
that use of the divine instrument that one can 
hardly refuse. Only on condition that it really 
will sift gravel will some people believe that it 
is a divine instrument. Simile aside, what we 
mean is this: some people insist that we must 
use the Bible as if it were a text book in natural 
science. If we refuse, they accuse us of a 
“cowardly compromise with the world” and 
declare that we are “trying to amputate the 
Word of God to fit the bed of the unbeliever.” 
We decline to plead guilty. But we also de¬ 
cline to subscribe to an unbiblical use of the 
Bible. If we yield to it for the time being, it 
is only to show that even at the worst there is 
less conflict between the Bible and the evolution 

i 

theory than some people imagine; while if we 
use the Bible as it should be used — for purely 
spiritual purposes — there is none whatever. 


Objections Considered 

“The evolution theory contradicts the Bible, 
for instead of the six days of creation spoken 
of there, it assumes the lapse of millions of 
years” 

I 

Two items enter into the Bible chronology 
at this point: the beginning of creation and the 
progress of creation. When did the “begin¬ 
ning” take place? If you turn to an old edition 
of the King James version of the Bible you are 
likely to find a very definite answer in the mar¬ 
gin — “4004 B. C.” But bear in mind that that 
is Irish, not Biblical, chronology. That date 
came from the pen of James Usher, an Irish 
Archbishop who flourished about the middle 
of the seventeenth century. Some unknown 
printer put it into the margin, and it stuck. 
The Bible itself does not tell us when the work 
of creation began, and even Voliva, perhaps the 
most rigid literalist among Bible interpreters 
in America to-day, admits that it “may have 
been millions of years ago.” 


The Larger Vision. 3 . 


34 


THE LARGER VISION 


II 

The progress of creation, we are told, cov¬ 
ered six “days”. But are we justified in assum¬ 
ing that they were twenty-four hour days? We 
do not always so use the word in ordinary par¬ 
lance. When we say that December has thirty- 
one days we mean thirty-one times twenty-four 
hours, but when we say that day follows night 
we mean less, and when we say that a certain 
event may happen in our own day we mean 
more than twenty-four hours. The Hebrew 
word yom is used in the same way. Sometimes 
it means twenty-four hours, more frequently it 
means less, and occasionally much more. Ex. 
10. 6 for example — “neither thy fathers nor 
thy fathers’ fathers . . . since the day that 
they were upon the earth” — can hardly be 
supposed to mean that those people lived only 
twenty-four hours, and became fathers in that 
period of time! And in Gen. 2. 4 we are told 
that the entire work of creation was accom¬ 
plished, not in six days, but in one — “in the 
day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.” 
The fact of the matter is that the Hebrew word 
yom, like our English word day, means an in- 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


35 


definite period of time, long or short. “And 
forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day 
is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a 
thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3. 8.) 

Ill 

This view of the “six day problem” is no 
modern fancy. St. Augustine, away back in 
the fifth century, “could not read the first chap¬ 
ter of Genesis and think of ordinary days.” 
Speaking of his views on the subject, Tayler 
Lewis remarks: 

“It was the wondrous style of the narrative 
that affected him, the wondrous nature of the 
events and times narrated; it was the impres¬ 
sion of strangeness, of vastness, as coming 
directly from the account itself, but which so 
escapes the notice of the unthinking, ordinary 
readers. . . . Carrying along with us these 
thoughts of the great father, we get a mode of 
exegesis which is most satisfactory in itself, 
and which need not fear the assault of any 
science. It transcends science; it cannot pos¬ 
sibly have any collision with it.” (Lange's 
Commentary on Genesis, p. 131.) 

Suppose then that the great scientist rolls 
up his vast chronologies and speaks of millions 
upon millions of years, why should that terrify 


36 


THE LARGER VISION 


us? Why should that “lead to atheism,” as 
some good people fear that it will? A photo¬ 
graphic portrait, secured in a fraction of a sec¬ 
ond, is held to prove the existence of a photog¬ 
rapher ; why should not an oil painting, requir¬ 
ing weeks or months or years for its comple¬ 
tion, imply the existence of a painter? Surely 
the glory of God does not depend upon the 
swiftness of His work, nor is faith dependent 
upon the instantaneous completion theory. 

“The evolution theory dethrones God and 
substitutes a blind machine ivhich is supposed 
automatically to evolve living organisms” 

I 

That is not true. Granted, that some evolu¬ 
tionists are atheists, it does not follow that the 
evolution theory itself is atheistic. Darwin 
acknowledged the Creator in the operations of 
nature. Wallace, his great collaborator, has 
been hailed as a “defender of faith in God.” 
Think of creation as a fabric being woven in 
the loom of time. Must the discovery that the 
weaving proceeds in an orderly manner, each 
figure growing organically out of its predeces¬ 
sor, necessarily imply that there is no Weaver 
at the Loom ? 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


37 


If we were to think only of the Omnipotence 
of God, leaving all other attributes out of con¬ 
sideration, we might imagine Him saying, “Let 
there be a hen,” and immediately the hen would 
be there, “limb’d and full grown.” But for 
some reason He does not do it that way. In¬ 
stead of that He causes her to evolve, in an 
orderly manner, out of an egg. That is genu¬ 
ine evolution, but it has not made atheists of 
us. Doubtless He could cause a boy to increase 
in stature by adding a couple of inches each 
year from without, as the bricklayer causes 
the wall to grow by adding brick to brick, but 
for some reason He prefers organic evolution 
to mechanical addition, and the boy grows, or 
evolves, from within. Is that cause for athe¬ 
ism ? And why should the conviction that there 
is a larger evolution — an evolution of species, 
similar to that of the invidual — lead us to 
atheism ? 

No, the evolution theory does not dethrone 
God. Evolution is His method of creation, that 
is all. It does not substitute a blind machine 
for an intelligent, purposeful Creator. A blind 
machine cannot grind out sentient beings. 
Water cannot rise above its own level. Lifeless 


38 


THE LARGER VISION 


matter cannot originate life, and the produc¬ 
tion of it in the chemical laboratory, should 
such a thing ever be accomplished, would only 
bring us a step closer to the divine Source of 
life. Evolution implies, rather than denies, 
God, for there can be no evolution without a 
corresponding involution. 

“The evolution theory denies that man was 
made in the image of God, and claims that he 
is a descendant of the beasts.” 

I 

The first part of that is absolutely false, and 
the latter part is poorly expressed. Let us 
consider this latter part first. Speaking of 
man’s physical constitution, the Bible declares 
that God “formed man of the dust of the 
ground.” Nobody knows better than does the 
modern scientist how true that is. Indeed he 
knows it so well that he can tell us, quite accu¬ 
rately, what particular varieties of “dust” enter 
into the composition of the human body, and 
the relative per cent, of each. And every stu¬ 
dent of Holy Writ ought to know that the Bible 
does not tell us how that “dust of the ground” 
was organized into a human form, or how long 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


39 


it took to bring about the organization. Neither 
the time nor the manner of the formation of 
the human body is indicated in the Bible, and 
hence there can be no conflict between biology 
and the Bible at this point. 

Between biology and some of the Bible teach¬ 
ers, however, there may be. We once heard a 
popular evangelist describe the creation of the 
first man. It was a vivid account, and closed 
in this manner: “There he lies, lifeless and 
motionless, till the Creator breathes into him 
the breath of life.” If that evangelist finds 
comfort in such a notion, if it helps him to keep 
faith with his God, he should be left in peace 
with it. No man has a right to rob him of it. 
But if he tries to force it on the rest of us he 
should be reminded that it is nothing but a 
fancy spun out of his own head. Nowhere does 
the Bible speak of the first man as a “lifeless 
and motionless form” awaiting the breath of 
life. 

II 

And why should people find anything “un¬ 
utterably repulsive” in the thought of man's 
ascent from the lower forms of life? Every 
individual makes the same trip! Each one of 


40 


THE LARGER VISION 


us began with a microscopic ovum and evolved, 
by gentle and orderly degrees, all the way up 
to maturity. Place an ovum under the micro¬ 
scope and look at it a while. Is it human or 
animal? Nobody can tell. It will have to be 
fertilized and undergo quite an evolution be¬ 
fore the difference becomes apparent, for in its 
earlier stages the human embryo is so much 
like that of certain animals that it is almost 
impossible to tell the one from the other. Only 
by closing your eyes to visible facts can you 
doubt that it is so. 

If some one were to tell you that at a certain 
stage in your development, some time before 
you were born, you yourself had a tail, your 
own little body was all covered with hair, and 
you had rudimentary gill slits, very similar to 
those of a fish, you would no doubt feel dread¬ 
fully shocked. But just the same it is true. 
You really were like that once. If your doctor 
is an educated man ask him, he knows. But 
why should you feel shocked over it? If that 
is the way God chose to bring you into the 
world, why should you recoil from it? Are you 
so much wiser and more spiritual than He? 
And what of Him to whose divinity Christian 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


41 


faith and experience have testified century- 
after century? He “came down from heaven,” 
but how? Not in a flare of supernal glory, as 
some devout dreamer might have fancied, but 
in the same humble manner in which we came. 
His body too was developed in the womb of a 
mortal mother. That is a part of our Christian 
creed. If He chose to consecrate anew this 
marvellous miracle, shall we insist that it is 
“degrading to God and man”? God forbid. 
No! there is nothing unclean or ignoble in the 
origin and development of the human body as 
God devised it. Prudery, false piety, or an un- 
c^an imagination may miss the beauty of it, 
but a reverent mind will recognize it as a holy 
thought of God. If the ascent of the individual 
does not repel us, why should the ascent of the 
race do it? If the evolution of the individual 
— and that is undeniable — does not upset our 
faith in God, why should the evolution of the 
species do it? 

To many the “kinship with the beasts” is a 
horrible thought, but there is no escaping that, 
whether we accept or reject the evolution 
theory. “Degradation!” — One cannot help 
wondering where so many good people got 


42 


THE LARGER VISION 


their contempt for the animals. If it was 
not beneath the dignity of God to create them, 
is it a Christian virtue in us to loathe them? 
If Jesus was not above using a hen to set forth 
His own solicitude for His people (Matt. 23. 
37), and if the great Jehovah was willing to 
bless the slimy things that swarm in the waters 
(Gen. 1. 22), who are we that we should de¬ 
spise them? Is there not just a wee little bit 
of sanctimonious snobbery in this contempt for 
the creatures of God? 


Ill 

The Bible does say that man was made IP 
the image of God,” and what a glorious thought 
it is! But what does it mean ? Surely it can¬ 
not refer only to his material body, for God is 
Spirit, not flesh. Surely the “image” must have 
special reference to the mental, moral, and spi¬ 
ritual qualities of man, rather than to his phys¬ 
ical constitution. And is there anything in the 
evolution theory to contradict that? Nothing 
whatever. It may have something to say about 
the development of those qualities, but nothing 
to discredit their resemblance to the divine. 

The Bible also says that God “breathed into 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


43 


the nostrils of man the breath of life/' but, 
again, what does that mean? Are we to sup¬ 
pose that He came down in a physical form and 
breathed into the physical nose of the first 
man? Let us remember that the inspired 
writer did not address himself to some modern 
Congress of Anthropologists, but to us common 
folks throughout all ages; also that he spoke 
with the bold realism and the rich imagery of 
the East. His words are a graphic way of say¬ 
ing that life, human life in particular, emanates 
from God, and that with the coming of man a 
“new creation” has entered the world. Through¬ 
out the Scriptures life is pictured as dependent 
upon the “breath” of God, and most people 
readily grasp both the figure and the fact back 
of the figure. “The Spirit of God hath made 
me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me 
life.” (Job 33. 4.) “Thus saith Jehovah . . . 
he that spread abroad the earth and that which 
cometh out of it: he that giveth breath to the 
people upon it. . . .” (Is. 42. 5.) Is there any¬ 
thing in the evolution theory to contradict this ? 
Absolutely nothing. It deals with the manifes¬ 
tations of life; here we are dealing with the 
origin of life. There can be no more danger of 


44 


THE LARGER VISION 


a collision here than between a locomotive and 
a steamship. It is when we try to run the 
steamship across the continent and the train 
across the sea that trouble begins. Each in its 
own place, and there is nothing to worry about. 
If our scientific train men and our theological 
seamen would only stick to their respective 
jobs we should enjoy more of both comfort and 
safety. 

IV 

“But,” asks the objector, “do you not believe 
that man was brought forth by a special act of 
creation ?” That depends on what you mean. 
Nature is sometimes spoken of as the “seamless 
robe of God” (compare Ps. 102. 25-27). Man 
is not a stick pin or a button attached to the 
robe; he is a part of it. The elements consti¬ 
tuting his body are the familiar elements of 
land and sea and air, and when his little span 
of life is complete, “the dust returneth to the 
earth as it was.” His physical kinship with 
the organic world around him, specially the 
animals, is profound and unmistakable; it is 
an axiom with men who are familiar with com¬ 
parative anatomy and kindred subjects.* 

* The reader will find some exceedingly interesting 
evidence of this in Dr. William W. Keen’s little book, 
“I Believe in God and in Evolution.”— (Lippincott). 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


45 


Even intellectually man is too closely inter¬ 
woven with this world of ours to be thought of 
as an extraneous being, thrust into it from 
without, as it were. Summer and winter, night 
and day, forest and field, land and sea and sky 
— the whole multifarious wonder in the midst 
of which he lives has challenged him to give 
attention, to think and ponder and plan; in 
other words, to evolve intellectually. That does 
not mean that “thought is the product of the 
clod,” but rather that the phenomena of the 
universe are the means by which the Creator 
develops the intellect of man, from the faintest 
glimmerings at birth to the full splendor of 
maturity. 

If, however, we look at the question from the 
other end of the line, so to speak, it will appear 
in a different light. Not from the hand-made, 
lifeless-and-motionless-clay-model theory, but 
from the viewpoint of the God-image in man 
will the deeper truth appear. The destiny of 
man, and his rank among the creatures of God 
must ever be of greater importance than the 
manner in which he came into existence. “The 
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation 
of the world,” was not spoken to the beasts of 


46 


THE LARGER VISION 


the field. “There shall be joy in heaven over 
one sinner that repenteth,” but of nothing that 
may happen in the animal kingdom beldw man 
is such a report brought in. From beginning 
to end the Bible treats of man as a unique 
being, a “special creation” in the deepest sense 
of the word, and there is nothing in natural 
science to gainsay it. The evolution theory 
deals with the history of the development of 
organic life, man included, but in the nature 
of things it cannot penetrate to the ultimate 
origin. The oft-repeated, “I am glad that I 
may look up to God, and not to a monkey, as 
my Father,” may sound very pious, but it 
proves either that the speaker is ignorant of 
what the evolution theory is and implies, as 
well as what it does not imply, or else that he 
wilfully misrepresents a multitude of honest 
seekers after the truth in the universe of God. 
As we already have seen, the scientists do not 
claim that man is a descendant of the monkeys, 
but simply that man and certain animals ap¬ 
pear to have had a common ancestry. Of 
course that can never be proven in quite the 
same way as one might be able to prove that 
two men had the same parents, and in the ab- 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


47 


sence of such proof it behooves us to be cau¬ 
tious on both sides of the problem. But the 
men who have dived into the depths of nature 
study — particularly biology, anthropology, and 
geology — tell us that the assumption rests 
upon such a mass of facts that it is impossible 
to doubt it. Suppose, then, that it should be 
true: that is no more a denial of the Fatherhood 
of God than the discovery that two twigs in a 
tree have grown out of a common branch is a 
denial of the trunk of the tree, or of the exist¬ 
ence of a Creator. The evolution theory does 
not deny that God is our Father. This or that 
evolutionist may deny it, but in so doing he 
steps outside of the realm of science into the 
realm of metaphysics, where, as a scientist, he 
is not an autority and need not be taken 
seriously. 

V 

The assertion that there have been three sep¬ 
arate acts of creation — the creation of matter, 
the creation of life, and the creation of con¬ 
sciousness (man) — lies outside the field of 
natural science. Science can neither affirm nor 
deny it. As a bit of philosophical and theolog¬ 
ical speculation, however, it is very interesting 
and merits attention. 


48 


THE LARGER VISION 


“The evolution theory implies a denial of the 
doctrine of immortality, for if man is nothing 
hut an evolved animal he certainly cannot have 
an immortal soul ” 

Why should the evolution theory imply a de¬ 
nial of the doctrine of immortality? Why? It 
is true that the evolutionist is unable to tell at 
what stage in the ascent man became immortal, 
but that applies to the individual no less than 
to the race. At what stage in his development 
did the individual become immortal? Was im¬ 
mortality inherent in the ovum, or did it arise 
at the moment of fertilization, or at some later 
prenatal period, or at birth, or a year or two 
later? Nobody knows, yet all Christendom has 
believed in personal immortality. Why should 
we doubt it because we are unable to tell at 
what time in the history of the race it was at¬ 
tained? The biologist deals with the evolution 
of organic material forms; the doctrine of im¬ 
mortality is a matter of spiritual life and Chris¬ 
tian faith. One is a problem of time, the other 
of eternity. Each bears the most intimate rela¬ 
tion to the other, yet each belongs in a realm 
of its own. Faith in one does not involve a 

denial of the other. 

% 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


49 


“The evolution theory is fundamentally un¬ 
christian, for it denies that man ever fell into 
sin, claims that there is an upward trend in 
nature, and dreams of a great current of des¬ 
tiny on whose bosom all things are being car¬ 
ried to perfection. In such a dream there is 
no room for Christ, and no need of Him” 

I 

It is true that the evolution theory points to 
an upward trend in creation, but so does the 
Bible. The first chapter of Genesis is a veri¬ 
table Song of Ascents, from the lowliest begin¬ 
nings to the highest forms of terrestrial life, 
man himself. At this point there is perfect 
agreement between biology and the Bible. The 
trouble begins with the Biblical story of the 
“fall.” Here the evolution theory is supposed 
to balk. If there is an evolution of organic 
forms, if the direction of that evolution is up¬ 
ward, and if man has been growing better and 
nobler all the time, as the anthropologist as¬ 
sures us that he has, then how can we believe 
this Bible story of the fall? Is not this a clear 
case of “either or”? 

It may seem so, but bear in mind that if the 
story of the fall contradicts the evolution 


The Larger Vision. 4. 


50 


THE LARGER VISION 


theory because of its implied doctrine of ascent, 
then it must contradict the Bible too, for the 
same reason, seeing that the two agree at this 
point. Let us analyze the problem. Two ele¬ 
ments enter into the Bible record: the upward 
trend, and the fall of man. The Bible and the 
biologist agree perfectly on the former; on the 
latter they are supposed to disagree. But the 
fact is that they do not disagree. Logically 
they cannot, for ascent is no guarantee against 
a fall. A man is not immune from the danger 
of falling because he climbs a ladder. On the 
contrary, it is only when he begins to climb that 
a fall becomes possible. Historically they can¬ 
not disagree, for the fall is not a mere theolog¬ 
ical dogma, it is an historical fact, which the 
biologist could not disregard if he would. Pas¬ 
sing by the whole subject of “degeneration,” 
of which Darwin and others have spoken at 
some length, we find much in humanity which 
cannot be explained by “the natural history of 
evil.” Moral delinquencies are sometimes 
designated as “beastly,” but that is an 
insult to the beasts, for human history is 
smudgy with crimes and vices no animal was 
ever known to commit. To call them beastly 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


51 


is a misnomer. They are below the beast level. 
If that is not a fall, what is it? Furthermore, 
there is that in human nature as such which 
has brought some of the deepest thinkers of 
the ages to the brink of despair. The sobbing 
of the centuries, the bloodshed and tears, the 
rebellions and the revolutions, the prisons and 
the gallows, are surface indications of a deep- 
seated sickness in the soul of man. The “sur¬ 
vival of the beast” may account for some of 
this, but not for all of it, and not for the worst 
of it. 

II 

The glory of the evolution theory — like that 
of the Bible — is that it reveals an upward 
trend in creation. But it does not assure us 
that all things are being carried to perfection. 
The facts are ominously eloquent to the con¬ 
trary. The ages are strewn with the wrecks 
of extinct species, and there is nothing in the 
evolution theory as such to guarantee that the 
human species may not share the same fate. 
The titanic wars of modern times, the devilish 
ingenuity in devising deadlier and deadlier im¬ 
plements of murder, the skimming of the cream 
of human vigor, that the unfit may survive. 


52 


THE LARGER VISION 


not only prove a deep-lying insanity in the 
heart of mankind but threaten to ruin the whole 
race. 

This, together with the innumerable (and 
usually futile) efforts to obtain and maintain 
justice, liberty, health and happiness, testifies 
to the ever present, world-wide need of a Sav¬ 
iour. To accept the evolution theory as a sub¬ 
stitute for Christ would only reveal a profound 
misunderstanding of the whole problem. The 
question is not whether we shall accept the evo¬ 
lution theory and reject Christ, or accept Christ 
and reject the evolution theory; the question is 
how to get out of the moral morass in which 
we are floundering and into the “great current 
of destiny that sweeps on to perfection.” If 
the evolution theory has anything to say on 
the subject, it is to cry for the Christ. Modern 
literature dealing with the subject of “soul 
winning’’ is rich in examples of individuals who 
had gotten out of that Divine current and were 
unable to get back. The “Bluebird of Mulberry 
Bend,” the “Regenerate” of whom Norman 
Duncan told in the Century Magazine for Jan. 
1911, the dozens of cases recorded by Harold 
Begbie in “Twice Born Men,” “Souls in Ac- 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 53 

tion,” and other books, will make clear what we 
mean. Each one of these unfortunates, back- 
watering and rushing down to ruin, was 
brought back into the shining stream, not by 
means of poetry or painting or music or math¬ 
ematics, but, to use their own testimony, by 
“Christ only.” And there is absolutely nothing 
in the theory of evolution to deny our need of 
Him. 

“The evolution theory is a heathen heresy, 
yure and simple, an unproven theory, a mere 
guess.” 

I 

To claim that it is nothing but a guess is 
certainly going too far, for anybody may see 
the process of evolution in operation right in 
front of him. Who has not watched an acorn 
sprout, unfold a few tender leaves, lift up a 
promising little trunk, send out branches, and 
grow into a young tree? That is evolution. 
Who has not seen a hen brood over her nest, 
till young lives break the shell-prisons and 
come forth, fluffy little miracles of soft yellow, 
into the light of day, and then grow from 
poultry infancy to poultry maturity? That too 
is evolution. That there is a difference be- 


54 


THE LARGER VISION 


tween the evolution of an individual organism 
and that of a species is of course perfectly 
evident, for in one case we are dealing with a 
unit, in the other with a series of units. But 
the difference is superficial rather than funda¬ 
mental. The principle of evolution is the same 
in both. And the principle can be most easily 
studied in the growth of the individual, for 
growth is evolution, as genuine as any in the 
world. 

II 

“But,” says the objector, “that is not what 
we mean when we speak of the evolution the¬ 
ory. It is the evolution of the species we doubt. 
That is a mere guess. In the nature of things 
it cannot be anything else. You may see an 
oak or a chicken evolve, but who w T as there 
and saw the species evolve?” 

The objector evidently imagines that the 
evolution of species took place once upon a 
time and then stopped, but that is not true. 
Evolution is still going on. It has never come 
to a standstill. But suppose it had: the ob¬ 
jector’s question might be asked, with the same 
result, about a great many things of which 
he himself has no doubt whatever. Who 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


55 


for instance, among the millions in the world 
to-day, “was there and saw it” when Hanni¬ 
bal crossed the Alps, or Columbus the At¬ 
lantic, or Washington the Delaware? Not 
one. Yet we believe that these events took 
place. We believe it because of the so-called 
historical evidence, of which there is such a 
mass that we cannot help believing it. Nobody 
can “prove” that the sun rose in the East, and 
not in the West, a thousand years ago, yet 
nobody doubts it. The fact that not one of us 
was there to see it does not greatly disturb 
us, for the circumstantial evidence is so strong 
that we cannot doubt. 

Who says that the evolution theory is a mere 
guess, the scientist or the layman? It is a 
notable fact that those who most eloquently 
insist upon the “mere guess” proposition are 
almost invariably men whose work lies outside 
of the field of natural science, while those 
who give all their time to observing the work¬ 
ings of nature assure us that practically all 
the known facts testify to an evolutionary pro¬ 
cess. 

In line with our little parable of the inun¬ 
dated valley, we might put it this way: Who 


56 


THE LARGER VISION 


is most entitled to an opinion on the subject, 
we who sit up here in the boat and see only 
what is above the surface, or the divers who 
plunge into the deep and actually follow the 
twigs and branches as far down as they can? 
That they have not been able to reach the 
bottom is perfectly true. They frankly admit 
that. But they assure us that actual investi¬ 
gation indicates that the branches converge 
towards a common center; in other words that 
the various species, instead of being separate 
creations, are much more deeply related than 
our forefathers ever dreamed. And just as 
there is a mass of historical data pertaining 
to Hannibal which cannot be accounted for 
upon any other hypothesis than the one usually 
adopted, namely, that he really did cross the 
Alps, so, they tell us, there are innumerable 
facts pertaining to the organic world which 
can be accounted for only on the assumption 
that evolution is a universal law running 
through all the ages. For us laymen in science 
to sit up here in the boat, seeing only what is 
above the surface, and ridicule and condemn 
these men is absurd, to say the least. 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


57 


III 

A scientific theory is not a toy for idle minds 
to play with, having nothing else to do. It 
is a tool which the scientist uses in his search 
for truth. To deny him the use of that tool 
is like refusing to let the carpenter use a saw. 
To insist that he keep it a secret, lest the 
students (if he is a teacher) should find out 
about it, is like compelling a manual training 
teacher to teach without letting his pupils use 
tools. The use of a theory is beautifully il¬ 
lustrated in the discovery of the planet Nep¬ 
tune. As late as 1845 the astronomers were 
still puzzled by the erratic movements of the 
planet Uranus. Like some laggard accommo¬ 
dation train in the outskirts of civilization, it 
would sometimes neither arrive nor leave on 
time. It seemed to have a will of its own and 
to do as it pleased. No astronomer was able 
to fathom its whims and caprices. Then Le- 
verrier, the French mathematician, hit upon 
a theory. He guessed that the deviations might 
be due to the attractions of some unknown 
planet outside of the orbit of Uranus. No¬ 
body had ever seen such a planet, and Lever- 
rier’s idea was nothing in the world but a 


58 


THE LARGER VISION 


theory. But it served both as a stimulus and 
a guide to further investigation, and on the 
assumption that there might be such a planet 
he proceeded to calculate where it would be 
at a given time. Having completed his calcu¬ 
lations he submitted them to Encke, the direct¬ 
or of the Berlin Observatory. Encke turned 
his telescope in the direction indicated and — 
found the planet! Thus a ‘'mere guess” led to 
the discovery of the outermost member of our 
solar system and added an important item to 
our knowledge of the universe. 

In biology men have launched the theory 
of evolution. It can of course never be proven 
in quite the same way as the preceding, but 
it serves the same purpose of stimulating and 
guiding in the investigation of the phenomena 
of nature. As medical students are in the 
habit of saying, “It is the handiest tool we have 
in our biological studies.” And as to its validity 
— let us repeat it! — those who best know the 
facts are most entitled to an opinion. 

IV 

“But the scientists themselves do not agree 
about it,” says the objector. “They themselves 
do not all accept the evolution theory.” There 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


59 


may be some little truth in that, but how many 
propositions in the realm of thought can you 
name about which there is no difference of 
opinion? Precisely how many scientists reject 
the theory — if indeed it is true that some of 
them do — is pretty hard to determine. The 
author has in his possession a formidable array 
of quotations from “great scientists” who are 
said to have turned against it, but for several 
reasons one cannot feel very deeply impressed 
by them. To begin with, those who take the 
trouble to gather such quotations almost never 
tell us exactly where they are to be found, mak¬ 
ing it impossible to verify them or to read them 
in their proper setting. One cannot help won¬ 
dering why they omit such important informa¬ 
tion. Furthermore, a little scrutiny shows that 
some of the quotations are absolutely irrelevant 
and prove nothing; that others, which it may 
be possible to locate and read in their proper 
context, leave precisely the opposite impression 
from the one the author meant to convey; and 
that still others are antiquated opinions of men 
to whom many of the leading facts upon which 
the scientists of to-day rely were entirely un¬ 
known. Really, the “mere guess” proposition 
js not very impressive. 


60 


THE LARGER VISION 


V 

But it is a “heathen heresy,” we are told. 
The charge is not surprising. There are rea¬ 
sons for it, and some of the men of science are 
themselves largely to blame for it. This is 
mainly true of second, third, and fourth 
rate “scientists” who, strictly speaking, can 
hardly be called scientists at all. They shine 
mainly by reflected light and are immensely 
anxious to shine. The profound spiritual mes¬ 
sage of the Biblical story of creation is entirely 
beyond them. They see only the surface, and 
that looks foolish to them. They evidently en¬ 
joy to shock all reverence out of their pupils, 
and they often succeed. We have a consider¬ 
able number of them in our public school sys¬ 
tem, and they are largely to blame for the 
recent upheaval. If the evolution theory is not 
in itself a heathen heresy, they certainly make 
it look like one. But men of higher grade also 
use occasional expressions which may need ex¬ 
planation. For example, they talk about “evo¬ 
lution versus creation.” Naturally the ill-in¬ 
formed assume that that means atheism. “If 
a man does not believe in creation of course 
he does not believe in a Creator.” But this is 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


61 


not what they mean. They doubt that the 
various species are so many “separate crea¬ 
tions, M each one of which jumped into existence 
in obedience to a sudden command, and believe 
instead that the organic world of to-day is the 
result of an age-long orderly development. 
That is all. 

The traditional view of the process of cre¬ 
ation is vividly expressed by John Milton, the 
great English poet of the seventeenth century, 
in Book VII of Paradise Lost. The Divine com¬ 
mand had been issued, and instantly 

“The earth obey’d and straight 
Op’ning her fertile womb teem’d at a birth 
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
Limb’d and full grown: out of the ground up 
rose 

As from his lair the wild beast where he wons 
In forest wild, in thicket, brake or den; 
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walk’d. 
The grassy clod now calv’d; now half appeared 
The tawny lion, pawing to get free 
His hinder parts.. .the stag from underground 
Bore up his branching head.. . 

At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, 
Insect or worm...” 

(Selected from lines 453—476). 



62 


THE LARGER VISION 


This is supposed to be the Biblical idea of 
the creative work, but it accords less with the 
Bible than with Lucretius, the heathen poet of 
Rome. In his De Rerum Natura he says: 

“In the beginning the earth gave forth all 
kinds of herbage and verdant sheen about the 
hills and over the plains... all things have been 
produced out of the earth... First of all the 
race of fowls and the various birds would leave 
their eggs, hatched in the springtime, just as 
now in summer the cicadas leave spontaneously 
their gossamer coats in quest of a living and 
life. Then you must know did the earth... 
shed forth every beast that ranges wildly over 
the great mountains.” (Munro’s translation, 
pp. 135, 136). 

Why indeed should we call the evolution the¬ 
ory a heathen heresy? If God is not a heretic 
when He evolves an individual organism, why 
should He be accused of heresy if He evolves 
the species? 

“The evolution theory has upset the faith of 
thousands , and should he stoutly denied by all 
time Christians , lest it upset the faith of num¬ 
berless others 

I 

That exhortation is no doubt well meant, but 
it is curiously naive. It seems to rest on the 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


63 


assumption that the evolution theory is a mat¬ 
ter of personal preference — that you c?n 
accept it or reject it according to your indi¬ 
vidual taste, as you do with a necktie or a 
picture or a business proposition. But of course 
that is not the case. A scientific theory is not 
established by assent or abolished by denial. 
The evolution theory cannot be abolished by 
“stoutly denying it,” or by keeping silent about 
it, or by ridiculing it or making laws to abolish 
it. You might as well try to abolish the at¬ 
mosphere, or the motion of water, or the grow¬ 
ing of grass by such means. 

It is true that the evolution theory has upset 
the faith of many people, but unfortunately 
that is true of almost every other advancement 
in our knowledge of the universe of God. The 
Copernican astronomy also upset the faith of 
thousands of people. So did the circumnaviga¬ 
tion of the earth, and so did the discovery that 
lightning is a display of electric energy and 
thunder a natural vibration of the air. But 
what can we do about it? Shall we go back 
to the days of our forefathers and try to believe 
once more that the earth is the one immovable 
thing in the universe? Shall we deny that men 


64 


THE LARGER VISION 


have circumnavigated the earth? Or shall we 
say, in spite of the navigation, that it is not an 
orb but a four cornered disk? Impossible! Our 
fathers could believe those things and be honest 
about it, but we, knowing certain facts which 
were unknown to them, cannot do it. 

Doubtless one could find many passages in 
the Bible which, if taken literally, would con¬ 
tradict the evolution theory, but by that method 
of interpretation it will contradict many other 
things besides. By that method we shall also 
have to insist that the earth has four corners; 
that there are exactly four winds; that the 
children of Israel did not walk from Egypt to 
Canaan but were carried through the air on 
the wings of birds, and so on; for “the Bible 
says so.”* 

But there are serious objections to that use 
of the Word of God. It has caused conflict 
and heart-ache century after century where 
men might have lived and breathed and praised 
God. It was that which blinded the Pharisees, 
so that they could not recognize the Son of 
God but nailed Him to the cross as a criminal. 
It was that which caused the Jews to persecute 


* Is. 11. 12, Rev. 7. 1, Jer. 49. 3(5, Mk. 13, 27, Ex. 19. 4. 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 65 

His followers, till they themselves were de¬ 
stroyed as a nation and scattered abroad. It 
was that which arose, with relentless fury, 
against the Copernican astronomy, now accept¬ 
ed by the most devout Christians, and branded 
it as “unbiblical, atheistic, anti-Christian,” and 
all the rest which is now said of the evolution 
theory. It is largely that which has brought 
so much contempt upon the Church of Christ 
and driven multitudes of intelligent people 
away from her. Those who insist on applying 
that interpretation of the Bible to the evolution 
theory should realize that they cannot logically 
stop there, for it clashes with modern science 
at many other points. Voliva follows it to its 
logical conclusion and curses modern astronomy 
just as lustily as he curses the evolution theory. 
As regards our present day knowledge of the 
universe this method of using the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures has no escape but in the dead past, no 
shelter but in opinions that were long ago 
proven false. 

II 

We hold no brief for lawless allegorizing, 
for by that the Bible can be made to teach any¬ 
thing that individual whims may crave; but 

The Larger Vision. 5 . 


66 


THE LARGER VISION 


the danger is just as great in the opposite di¬ 
rection. The letter is the shell, not the kernel, 
of the Word. Both must be respected, each 
for its own purpose. But the purpose of the 
shell is protective, not nutritive. We “live by 
the spirit,” not by the letter, for “the letter 
killeth, but the sfpirit giveth life.” It is a 
pleasure to acknowledge that many of the most 
rigid literalists are consecrated Christians and 
do a great deal of good, but that is in spite of, 
not because of, their literalism. On the other 
hand literalism may shelter, and has sheltered, 
some of the most bigoted, cruel, and unchrist- 
like souls in history. It is a real danger. 
“Five hundred years of mistaken opposition,” 
says Dean Farrar, “may, it is to be hoped, 
have convinced theologians that all their teach¬ 
ings are neither infallible nor divine. It is 
only the foundation of God that remaineth sure, 
and on that foundation have been built the ir¬ 
refragable conclusions of science. True science 
and true religion are twin sisters, each study¬ 
ing her own sacred book of God, and nothing 
but disaster has arisen from a petulant scorn 
of the one and the false fear and cruel tyrannies 
of the other. Let them study in mutual love 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


67 


and honor side by side, and each pronounce 
respecting those things which she alone knows.” 
(History of Interpretation, pages 427, 428). 
“Every great discovery in science,” says an¬ 
other noted writer, “has, in turn, been viewed 
with suspicion by worthy but mistaken the¬ 
ologians, and every error in physical science 
now exploded, has been vindicated by what was 
held at the time to be the voice of Scripture.” 

Ill 

Did you ever hear the story of Dream Valley? 
It was a beautiful dip among the mountains, 
inhabited by thousands of good people. A noble 
river watered the land, enriching and beauti¬ 
fying the landscape. Through all generations 
men had supposed that it came down from the 
Southern mountains, and fairy tale, song, and 
romance had gathered around the assumption. 
But one day a young adventurer decided to 
find out by actual exploration where the source 
of the river really was. He set out for the 
Southern mountains, following the river as he 
went. Many a day he journeyed, leaving the 
valley far behind him. Miles and miles away 
he discovered a bend in the river towards the 


68 


THE LARGER VISION 


East, and after many more days he found him¬ 
self among the Eastern mountains. There was 
the source of the river, not in the South. 

When he returned to his native valley and 
reported his find the whole population rose up 
in astonishment. “He is crazy!” cried some. 
“He is an impostor,” said others, “there is no 
sense to what he says, he is a renegade, an in¬ 
fidel, beware of him as you would of the pest!” 
Some laughed him to scorn, others hissed at 
him, and a few wanted to burn him alive. But 
after a time the excitement subsided a little 
and people began to think more calmly. “After 
all,” said one, “truth is truth and fact is fact. 
If the source of the river really is in the East, 
and not in the South, we shall have to adjust 
ourselves to the fact. Let us find out if it 
really is as he says.” And so an expedition 
of brave and honest men set out to investigate. 
Other expeditions went forth later on. They 
all reported substantially the same thing. 
There was a bend in the river, they all admit¬ 
ted, and from there on it led eastward, as the 
young man had said. The actual source of it 
none of them had been able to reach, but they 
all agreed that it must be somewhere among the 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


69 


Eastern mountains from which the river really 
did come down. 

The discovery played havoc with all the tra¬ 
ditions of Dream Valley. It upset poetry, song, 
and story. For a thousand years men had 
worshipped with their faces toward the South, 
lifting their eyes with reverence to the gleam¬ 
ing mountains from which came the life sus¬ 
taining river, and now — now! — Old men 
wept over the new “heresy.” The “faith of 
the fathers” was no more in the Valley. But 
what kind of faith was it? A geographical 
faith, that was all. Or rather, let us say that 
it was no faith at all. It was an opinion — 
-— a poor, ill-founded opinion about a bit of 
nature. Further information proved it false, 
and being false, it fell of its own weight. But 
it was not faith that fell, only an opinion. Was 
that such a tragedy? 

The mischief of the matter, however, was 
that the false opinion had been so interwoven 
with the religious faith of the people as to make 
it appear impossible to worship God without 
believing in the southern origin of the river. 
Therefore the discovery which upset the geo¬ 
graphical doctrine also upset the religious faith, 


70 


THE LARGER VISION 


which should not have been necessary. Among 
us the same thing has taken place. The Chris¬ 
tian faith has been tied up with the naturalistic 
opinions of the age (the Ptolemaic astronomy 
for example), and when greater insight into 
the facts of nature has made these opinions 
untenable the religious faith has also been 
disturbed. Then the cry of infidelity and athe¬ 
ism has gone up, and there has been fear and 
conflict and persecution, until faith could be 
disentangled from the crumbling ruins of false 
opinions about nature and left free to grow 
once more towards heaven. It was most un¬ 
fortunate that this entanglement should ever 
have taken place, but bear in mind that it did 
not originate with Christ or His apostles. 

IV 

Critics of natural science point with scorn 
to the instability of scientific conclusions. “No 
sooner,” they tell us, “have the scientists 
‘established’ a great scientific theory than some 
Copernicus or Newton or Einstein comes along 
and knocks it over. What’s the use of listen¬ 
ing to them? Let us build on the Rock, and 
not on the shifting opinions of fallible men.” 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


71 


Exactly! That is just what the present 
writer is contending for. If the churchmen 
had done that, instead of building so largely 
on the Ptolemaic astronomy, they would not 
have suffered from the Copernican disturbance. 
If they had not built so extensively on the 
instantaneous completion theory of Lucretius 
and Milton they would not be so upset by the 
evolutionary upheaval of to-day. The task be¬ 
fore us right now is to disentangle our religious 
faith from the meshes of antiquated biological 
opinions which have proven untenable and with 
which faith should never have been tied up. 

But on the other hand let us remember that 
if men had heeded the critics and waited till 
the theories had been proven we should still 
be in the Dark Ages. Had that principle pre¬ 
vailed we should still be tilling the soil with 
a spade, reaping with a sickle, and threshing 
with a flail; we should still be minus the steam¬ 
ship and the railroad and the telegraph, still 
fancy an eclipse to be a black dragon swallow¬ 
ing the moon, still be the helpless victims of 
smallpox and diphtheria and the yellow fever. 

Science is a pilgrimage in the universe of 
God; faith is the resting place of the soul. Both 


72 


THE LARGER VISION 


are glorious and God-appointed. The universe 
is neither static nor distracted. Advance! — 
with the peace of God in your heart. Be not 
afraid. 

“Whether gravitation attracts inversely as 
the square of the distance, or not,” says Wil¬ 
liam H. P. Faunce, president of Brown Uni¬ 
versity, “whether species were created instant- 
er, as coins are stamped in the mint, or were 
created by process, as a gardener grows roses 
— that has nothing to do with the great fun¬ 
damentals of religion: ‘Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neigh¬ 
bor as thyself’ . . . Science is not yet able to 
discern a world-soul or a creator; it leaves that 
to religion. It has nothing to say about the 
purpose and goal of life or the spiritual pres¬ 
ence in all things, which is the vital breath 
of religion. 

“What President Andrew D. White called 
the ‘conflict of science and theology' is really 
a conflict between the open mind and the closed 
mind in both theology and science. . . Jona¬ 
than Edwards was no more sure of the damna¬ 
tion of non-elect infants than was Ernst Haec¬ 
kel of his own atheistic inferences; while Phil- 


OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


73 


lips Brooks and Lord Kelvin were equally cloth¬ 
ed with humility and girded with courage. The 
so-called ‘conflict’ goes steadily on in every 
church and in every scientific association — 
the conflict between two types of mind, the 
conflict between those whose supreme concern 
is to conserve the hard-won gains of our 
fathers and those whose supreme desire is 
to enlarge the bounds of knowledge and life 
for our children. Copernicus and Columbus 
were opposed by the science of their generation 
as militantly as by the current theology, and 
were pelted with passages from Aristotle as 
freely as with texts from Genesis and Isaiah. 

“In the modern form of the ancient theory 
of evolution we have been offered a key to the 
universe which unlocks more chambers than 
any other key yet discovered. Of course, evo¬ 
lution cannot explain the ultimate cause of any¬ 
thing. It can simply tell us how things came 
into their present form. On my table are some 
chrysanthemums cut out of bright orange- 
colored paper, and beside them a few weeks ago 
were some genuine chrysanthemums developed 
by careful gardeners through decades or cen¬ 
turies of experiment. Will any one believe 


74 


THE LARGER VISION 


that the paper flowers, cut and pasted together 
in a few minutes, are more divine, or more 
worthy of their human maker than the real 
blossoms that are the result of evolution under 
expert guidance? But if the story of man on 
earth shows that he, too, was not put together 
in an instant, but was gradually grown; that 
the human race, like each man in the race, 
slowly assumed its present form, its institu¬ 
tions, laws, customs and manners — if that be 
true, as every man of science affirms, is the 
church to stand terrified and cry: They have 
taken away my Lord?' 

“Yet wise men will not seek to exclude any 
Fundamentalist*. . . He is mistaken; he is 
undermining the faith of thousands; but he is 
sincerely wrong, and hence on the way to be¬ 
come right. He needs not violent objurgation, 
nor condescending pity, but simply continuous 
education. He needs to realize that there ‘is 


* The author evidently uses the word in the popular 
sense, referring to a certain type of religious leaders 
who designate themselves by that term. They are usual¬ 
ly good, consecrated men, but in their use of the Bible 
they cling to a rigid literalism which tends to make 
them hard, intolerant, and cock-sure, even where they 
are poorly informed. The real Fundamentalists are en¬ 
tirely different, but are seldom spoken of as Fundamen¬ 
talists — a little irony of terms again! 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 


75 


more light yet to break out of the Word/ that 
no physical demonstration has done or can do 
the chaotic world any permanent good; and 
that belief in a spiritual religion means reliance 
solely on spiritual forces for the setting up of 
the Kingdom of Heaven. In that Kingdom men 
shall come from the north and the south and 
the east and the west; from the analytic reason¬ 
ing of the north and the fervent loyalty of the 
south, from the brooding meditation of the east 
and the restless action of the west. In that 
Kingdom men shall achieve not only tolerance, 
but liberty.” (The World’s Work for March, 
1923; Doubleday, Page & Co. Quoted by per¬ 
mission.) 


The Larger Vision 

I 

We have spent a while in the gravel pit, sift¬ 
ing sand with the Golden Harp — the Word 
of God. We did it under protest, feeling all 
the while that it was an abuse of the divine 
instrument, but we did it in the hope of show¬ 
ing that it can be done. In other words, just 
as, to a limited extent, one can sift gravel with 
a harp, so, within reasonable limits, the Bible 
does serve as a text book in natural science, 
although it is worse than foolish to use it that 
way. But now let us get out of the pit of argu¬ 
ment and seek a wider outlook. 

It is of course true that the evolution theory 
has caused a tremendous upheaval in the world 
of thought. It has ruined some of the loveliest 
pictures that ever enriched the imagination of 
man, and left many a soul feeling inwardly 
barren and sadly confused. But thoughtful 
men have seen long ago that it is not as serious 
as it looks. The disturbance has never reached 
the Sanctuary of the Lord. The Holy of Holies 


THE LARGER VISION 


77 


is unharmed. The Innermost of the Christian 
faith — that by which men really live — is 
in no way injured. Only tradition and fallible 
opinions have been hurt. 

Long ago Christian thinkers saw that the 
strictly scientific theory of evolution, “cleansed 
of all adventurous and ill founded speculation,” 
does not in any way contradict the real purpose 
of the Bible. It does not deny God. It does not 
deny that He is the Creator of all things, or 
that He made man in His own image. It does 
not deny that there is sin in the world, nor does 
it offer any substitute for Jesus Christ, the 
Saviour of the world. Every truly fundamen¬ 
tal doctrine of the Christian faith is left un¬ 
harmed. There is really no cause for alarm. 
On the contrary, though traditional opinions 
have been roughly handled, we have gained 
rather than lost by this revolutionary theory. 
Indeed, that may be said of natural science in 
general. It has enriched rather than impover¬ 
ished us. Our vision of the universe of God 
has been vastly enlarged, and we should be 
thankful rather than fearful. 




78 


THE LARGER VISION 


II 

Compare the universe in which we live with 
that in which the fathers lived. To them the 
earth was a four-cornered disk, the one import¬ 
ant and immovable thing in the realms of mat¬ 
ter, while heaven was an inverted blue bowl, 
and the stars so many unimportant points of 
light. To us the earth is a mere speck of dust 
afloat in the abysmal infinitudes of space, while 
the stars are suns, each one of them thous¬ 
ands or millions of times larger than the earth, 
and all of them so far away that the boldest 
imagination cannot conceive of it — some of 
them so distant that light, flashing through 
space at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, 
needs many thousand years to reach this earth! 
Our fathers could vaunt themselves consistent¬ 
ly, decking themselves with purple and gold and 
royal regalia, but we had better walk humbly 
with our God, lest we perish by the very vast¬ 
ness of His glory. So overwhelming is the 
universe as we know it that it is well for us to 
come back betimes from our terrible flight 
among the stars and sit quietly at the feet of 
the Master, till He assure us, as only He can, 
that for all its greatness the universe is not too 


THE LARGER VISION 


79 


great for the Father’s loving care — that not 
a birdling in the farthest forest, not a spar¬ 
row in the street or a hair of the head, is too 
insignificant for His attention. 

Or think of Time. How limited it was to the 
fathers! It is said that John Lightfoot, the 
great Hebrew scholar of the University of 
Cambridge, figured out that man was created 
at nine o’clock in the morning, October 26, 4004 
B. C. The “4004”, however, is usually attrib¬ 
uted to Bishop Usher of Ireland — and he is 
welcome to the honor. It may have been a 
great achievement in his time, but we of to-day 
can hardly feel grateful to him for still haunt¬ 
ing the margins of many editions of the Bible 
and confusing the uninformed by overshadow¬ 
ing the sublime “In the beginning” of the Word 
of God with his own little man-made chronolo¬ 
gy. The great bishop leads us through a few 
fluttering centuries and halts abruptly at 4004 
B. C. — as if God were little and limited like 
ourselves, in time as well as in space. Modern 
science leads us on and on, through ages and 
aeons without number, and leaves us listening, 
as in a dream, to the great River of Time 


80 


THE LARGER VISION 


gliding out of Eternity down into Space. Which 
is more in keeping with our faith in the Infinite 
God — the God of the Bible —, that limited 
little tract of Time, surrounded by its man¬ 
made chronological fence, or this majestic 
sweep of aeons no man can number? 

Or turn to the process of creation. Accord¬ 
ing to the traditional view God issued a sudden 
command which was as suddenly obeyed. He 
called for a lion, and the lion stood forth; he 
called for a tiger, and the tiger appeared; he 
called for a horse, and the horse arose. That 
is supposed to be the Biblical view, but it leans 
more on Milton than on the Bible; and Milton, 
as we have seen, leans heavily on Lucretius, the 
heathen poet of Borne. Compelled by innumer¬ 
able facts to abandon this notion, we look into 
the cosmos of God from our modern vantage 
ground and find it more sublime. We can see 
God weaving his wonderful fabric in the Loom 
of Time, the figures unfolding through the 
long, long ages in one sublime, harmonious 
plan. We can see that He is not in a hurry, 
and that He is not making a crazy-quilt, but 
weaving a seamless robe. We can see that in 


THE LARGER VISION 


81 


every movement there is wisdom and beauty 
and dignity. It is a study of absorbing inter¬ 
est, for if Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of the lilies of the field, what 
is to be said about the star-gemmed raiment 
of the cosmos? At least this, that if it was 
worthy of the creative care of God it cannot be 
beneath our dignity to give it deep and rever¬ 
ent attention. 


Ill 

Doubtless there is danger of becoming too 
absorbed in the contemplation of its glory — 
so absorbed that we forget the Weaver for the 
wonder of His weaving. Then we become “vain 
in our reasonings, and our senseless heart is 
darkened.” Then, “professing ourselves to be 
wise, we become fools,” no matter what theory 
of His creative method we accept. When a 
wounded conscience writhes in agony, when the 
stain of guilt is on the soul and will not wash 
away, when death is at the door and all the 
wisdom of the world is helpless against him — 
what does it matter then whether the world 
was created in six ordinary days or in six 
million years; whether the species arose 


The Larger Vision. 6 . 


82 


THE LARGER VISION 


“limb’d and full grown” or came up through a 
process of gradual development; whether the 
earth is flat as a disk or round as a ball; wheth¬ 
er it revolves around the sun or the sun around 
it? In such a crisis nature study is inadequate. 
The soul cries out for God. And that is where 
the Bible has its place. Where nature study 
fails, it satisfies, for it reveals the Lamb of 
God, that taketh away the sin of the world. 
Therein lies its unique function, as well as its 
undeniable infallibility. Luther speaks of the 
Holy Scriptures as the swaddling clothes of 
Christ. “Rude and unpretentious they are, but 
precious is the treasure, Christ, which lies 
within them.” And in his edifying commentary 
on the Psalms he says, “Nowhere in the Scrip¬ 
tures do I see anything but Christ crucified.”* 
That is the right use of the Bible. It was that, 
and not a stubborn quarrel with the nature stu¬ 
dents, which gave the Church of Christ her 
irresistible power in the first centuries. Let 
us return to her use of the Word, for only thus 

* “Schlecbt und geringe Windel sind es, aber theur ist 
der Schatz, Christus, der drinnen liegt.” (Erlangen 
Auflage, 63: 8) “Ego non intelligo usquam in Scriptura 
nisi Cbristum erucifixum.” (Dicta super Psalterium 
1513—1516 Psalmus Cl (CII), Weimar Auflage, IV :153). 



THE LARGER VISION 


83 


can we attain to a true perspective of the uni¬ 
verse, only thus can we obtain a measure of her 
power and be of service to the Master and to 
our fellow men. 


Epilogue 

Once more we were on the banks of the 
Cardigan river, this time in the latter part of 
the winter. We were standing under a hickory 
tree and I was examining one of the buds, 
noticing the little wooden scales which en¬ 
closed it. 

“What a marvellous arrangement!” she ex¬ 
claimed. 

“What a foolish arrangement!” I retorted. 
“Within this rough exterior is a tender little 
life of the most exquisite delicacy, and then to 
encase it in a set of horny scales! I shall pick 
them away.” 

“If you do that you will kill it,” she said. 
“They are there to protect it.” 

I took her advice and let them alone. 

Several weeks later we stood again under the 
hickory tree. The sky was blue and the sun 
was warm. Once more I examined the bud. 
The scales were spreading apart and ready to 
fall. 

“This will not do,” I said. “You told me 
that they are there to protect the life inside, 
and now they are falling off. I will tie a 


EPILOGUE 


85 


string around them and keep them together.’" 

“If you do that you will kill the bud,” she 
replied. “They have served their purpose now 
and are ready to go. Let God have His way, 
He knows best.” 

And again I took her advice and let them 
alone. 

A parable? Yes. The bud is a human soul, 
and the scales are childhood opinions — crude 
perhaps, but necessary. Let no man tear them 
away before their time. The winter of unbelief 
is a deadly danger. 

But there comes a time when the opinions of 
childhood have served their purpose and begin 
to loosen. To “tie a string around them” is 
just as foolish and just as dangerous as to tear 
them off. Let God have His way, He knows best. 
Say to the troubled soul, Fear not. Opinions 
are intellectual and changeable, but faith 
abides. The universe is big, but it is His. Be 
not afraid. Keep yourself in the love of 
Christ, and in the warmth of His presence let 
your soul expand. Grow like the cedars of 
Lebanon, and the higher you reach, the wider 
will be the horizon, the nobler your vision of 
God. 


Books for Further Study 

Those who desire fuller information on the subject 
here discussed will find the following books worth while. 

FROM THE SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW. 

A Manual of Zoology by Richard Hertwig, Professor 
of Zoology in the University of Munich. The author 
is one of the foremost living authorities in zoology. 
Pages 19—56 are devoted to a history of the evolution 
theory and Darwin’s theory of the origin of species. 
For a brief presentation of the subject it is one of the 
best accounts obtainable. (Henry Holt). 

Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics by H. 
II. Newman, Professor of Zoology in the University of 
Chicago, is a volume of 523 pages, thoroughly scientific 
and up-to-date. It would be difficult to find a more 
satisfactory account of the evolution theory in any 
language. (The University of Chicago Press.) 

The Theories of Evolution by Yves Delage, Professor 
of Zoology, Anatomy and Physiology at the University of 
Paris (352 pages). Those who desire a thorough-going 
discussion of the history of modern evolution theories 
will find this work, by one of the highest authorities 

of to-day, eminently satisfactory. (Huebsch.) 

% 

EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 

1 Believe in God and in Evolution by Dr. William W. 
Keen, Emeritus Professor of Surgery, Jefferson Medical 
College, Philadelphia (100 pages). Dr. Keen is one of 
the best known surgeons in the United States and is 


BOOKS FOR FURTHER STUDY 


87 


the author of various scientific works in his own field 
of activity. The little book here referred to is dedicated 
“To all sincere seekers after the truth; who revere the 
Bible as the Word of God; who revere nature as the 
Work of God; and who believe that rightly interpreted 
they must surely agree.” (Lippi is; cott) . 

The Ascent Through Christ by E. Griffith-Jones (469 
pages). “Built up between two hostile camps — ob¬ 
scurantist theologians on the one hand and dogmatic 
scientists on the other — where it would be exposed 
to the sharpest cross firing from both directions, this 
work has met with a surprisingly warm welcome from 
both parties.” (Gorham, N. Y.) 

Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought by 
the late Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Geology and 
Natural History in the University of California (382 
pages). A pioneer work in this line which has helped 
many to find a way towards a reconciliation between 
religion and this branch of science. It is a bit verbose 
and somewhat vague here and there, but is still worth 
reading. (Appleton.) 


















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